


Powerless

by JustAnotherGhostwriter



Series: Rose Tyler and the Cracks of the Universe [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen, i almost want to tag this as badfic, only my beta saved its ass, the worst fight in fanfiction history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 11:11:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherGhostwriter/pseuds/JustAnotherGhostwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose wants to go. The Doctor is against the idea. They share words about their differing opinions. </p><p>A flesh-out of a scene mentioned in part one of this series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Powerless

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I am aware this is bordering on very badly OOC. But after I posted the last fic I read over the part of the Doctor not being happy and this companion piece came to mind. (You don’t have to read “The Return of the Wolf” to understand this one, though.)When I said I’m subject to my muse I wasn’t bluffing. So. Read this one with a pinch of salt?
> 
> Beta read by the eternally lovely The Silver Devastation. Use, reblog, edit, destroy etc as you will. I don’t care. Just if it is used for fic or art in some way please consider linking me? I love reading/looking.
> 
> [Part of the Great Fic Dump From Tumblr of 2013]

It was moments like this that reminded her that the Doctor was the same person as he had been. His face was different than the face of the man she’d first met, he only had one heart and one lifetime and nuances of Donna would escape every now and then. But this type of dragging, frigid silence was more reminiscent of the days when he’d been Northern with a leather jacket and an uncanny ability to push her buttons, insult her and then join her in sulking about their fights.

At the same time, however, this was very different. In the beginning their after-fight iciness would last for an hour at most before one of them returned to the other with some subtle-yet-glaringly-obvious peace offering. This time, they’d been standing side by side for almost the entire afternoon. And her Doctor wouldn’t even look at her, let alone speak to her.

Rose thought that perhaps it was his brooding that was making him able to work less than three meters away from her while pretending she didn’t exist. She thought that the clench of his jaw and the angle of his eyebrows meant that he would be that way for everybody. But then Agent Harris came up to ask for his opinion on something and the glare morphed into his usual charming smile.

And that pissed Rose off.  Harris had only started five days ago - the Doctor barely knew him from a bar of soap. And yet Harris was the one he was going to break his stormy streak for? Rose found herself having to replay the vow she’d made not to say anything until he’d cooled down lest the argument be started up again. That was the one thing she’d learnt from watching her mum and dad bicker - wait until the other person is cooled off or you’ll be yelling in circles for hours. But then the worst happened. Harris turned to Rose with a shy yet friendly smile and enquired how she was and the Doctor answered for her. And his answer was sour and condescending and more than a little rude and it just made her see red.

"Well, looks like we found another thing from Donna that you have, 'cause I know for a fact other men don't get PMS,” Rose snapped at him, barely noticing when Harris made a hasty and very wise retreat.

The Doctor turned to glare at her, his eyes stormy and vast and actually quite terrifying. If she wasn’t as mad as she was right then she would have backed off and let him be.

"Don’t," he warned her coldly.

Rose’s chin raised defiantly even as he turned back to his work.

"What? So now you’re just gonna ignore me for the rest of the day? Be quietly pissed off at me and tell everybody who comes into contact with us that I’ve made you angry?"

He straightened at once and turned back to her with even more smouldering fury. “This isn’t just a simple fight, Rose! This isn’t one of us having a bad day and snapping at the other. This is… I can’t even believe that you would do that.”

He was right, of course. This fight had been serious. And it was quickly chalking up to be like the _other_ fight they’d had - the first real one they’d ever been in. He’d only been human for three months, back then, and he was understandably struggling with it a bit. And she was struggling with loving him but loving the other Doctor and feeling guilty for keeping him bound to the slow life and hating herself and hating him and wanting to help and not knowing how and Torchwood was in crisis so they were awake much more than they were asleep. And they’d snapped. They didn’t know who’d started it, only that it ended in a warzone of tears and slamming doors and both of them saying things they’d hate themselves for for the rest of eternity.

_(“I was not created for the soul purpose of loving you! Have you ever thought about that?”_

_"Yeah? Well I don’t want a cheap copy anyway!")_

They’d torn each other open and then stuck fingers in the bleeding wounds and pulled and pulled until they were both in shreds. And they didn’t speak for a week. Surely, if they’d gotten through that then this should not be such a big deal? She didn’t think it was that bad, anyway. She’d expected him to be angry, of course, but not like this. This was overreaction, a stubborn part of her brain said. And in her anger, her brain-to-mouth filter vanished.

"You are so overreacting about this!"

It was the wrong thing to say.

"Overreacting?" He took a step closer to her and she actually had to force herself to stay still under the power of his glare. "Overreacting about the fact that I found out my wife has a secret _suicide plan_? And don’t you dare tell me it’s not suicide. Don’t you dare do that to me, Rose.”

Rose closed the mouth she’d opened hotly and instead stared right back at the man she loved. If she could take back that morning, she really would. Or she’d settle for killing Ames for talking so damned loudly in a place the Doctor was known to frequent. Yeah, she’d hidden it from him. But it was for good reason. And that was the part that he was so steadfastly refusing to get.

"It’s only if it needs to be done," she bit back, not backing down an inch.

"It will never need to be done," he snarled back, and for the first time she saw what was hiding beneath the anger. Fear. "There are always other ways-"

  
“Other ways to defeat an alien race once you’ve done what everybody says is impossible and hopped universes? Spin me a new one.”

His jaw clenched even more and there was too much emotion in those eyes for her to define it all any more. And even though she was so terribly, terribly mad at him she felt her heart break a little for how much she was hurting him. This was necessary, though. It was very necessary and she was not going to back down.

“You are not going to be hopping universes!” he told her in a dangerous voice and her eyebrows shot up immediately.

“Oh, well now that you’ve forbidden me, of course I won’t.” The sarcasm was palpable, and it made him even angrier.

“You told me you weren’t going to go barrelling over there to save him until all of us agreed it was absolutely necessary.” He’d never sounded so accusing. There was a bite of something underneath his words, but she was too angry to identify it right then.

“Yeah, I did. And then that page arrived and it was no longer a bunch of half-truths about a race not even you knew about. Now it’s a real threat, Doctor. Now taking action is not just a backup plan, it’s something we’ve gotta really think about.”

The whispered legends about the mysterious race called The Silence had started slipping through to them just after cracks started appearing in the walls between the universes (again, she might add). Her Doctor had not known of them, and it was this curiosity (and honestly a little bit of fear – the Doctor was supposed to know every race) that had made Torchwood One set up a surveillance crew. This crew was tasked to pick up every scrap of evidence about The Silence that leaked through the cracks and could thus be picked up by Doctor-Improved Torchwood computers. At first it had seemed like a very distant possibility of a threat – the information they got was a mess of myth and obvious hogwash and contradictory information. The only thing that kept them on the trail was the fact that every bit of evidence pointed to the fact that The Silence were linked to the Doctor. And not in a good way.

And then, inexplicably a message appeared from out of the cracks. A single sheet of paper, like one would find as a printed page from a Word Processor. It said simply: The Silence want to kill the Doctor. The rest of the page was filled with tiny, repetitive words that made Rose’s blood run cold. _Bad Wolf. Bad Wolf Bad Wolf Bad Wolf…_

The arrival of the paper had turned Rose’s half-baked worries into fully-fledged plans. Competent agents she knew she could trust were contacted and told they were being placed in a special operations team; that they were being trained to combat a largely unknown enemy in a universe completely unfamiliar to them. But all these plans were done with her Doctor’s knowledge and gruding consent. Her backup plan – the thing she’d turn to if her task team was not enough to help the Doctor out long enough that he could rid himself of his enemy – was kept secret between herself, her father and Captain Ames. Because neither of the men were fools; they’d asked her for backup plans as soon as she’d told them her main one. And she’d given them a half-truth: the paper that had come served as a warning but also as a promise. If the need arose, if things were truly that desperate, the TARDIS could be opened so Rose could look into its heart. Pete and Ames hadn’t understood past the fact that Rose had an actual Plan B.

The Doctor, when he heard it, understood everything. Including the fact, Rose was guessing, that she would not make the mistake of killing the man she was trying to save a second time. If the Bad Wolf returned, this time it would burn itself out like a supernova.

His reaction was the exact reason she hadn’t revealed that particular part of her plan to him.

“You’re not thinking about it, Rose. You’re doing it. You’re already doing all of it! This is you vainly attempting to train some poor human sods to take on a race you don’t even understand! Putting your life-”

“Do you even know how hypocritical you sound right now?” she interrupted him, folding her arms tightly across her chest. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot you have double standards. You can do whatever the hell you want, but lo and behold one of us tries-”

“ _I was a Time Lord!_ ” He was finally really yelling. “Alien! With superior everything. You are human. You have one life. And it is not your job to save everybody! It’s not your job to save him! Just because there’s suddenly a way through and he’s in a spot of hot water does not mean you have to sign over your stupid little ape life at a click of his fingers!” The bite was back, and suddenly Rose understood it. It was jealousy. Anger, fear and jealousy. She wanted to hit him and hug him all at once. “You will not be damned to hell, you stupid human, for being a little bit selfish!”

Subconciously, Rose’s hands balled into fists. “Oh my -! You don’t get it. This is selfish, you daft, assholic, stubborn alien! This is the most selfish thing I have ever done! I am taking innocent men and women with me to another universe where they could very well _die_ because of nothing more than my inability to be powerless. Don’t you understand? If we can get through the cracks, so can they! What if one Doctor isn’t enough for them, huh? Did you ever stop to think about that? Well I’m not gonna let it happen, you hear? Because you can record as many bloody goodbye messages as you want, you can push me aside and lock me up when you think things are too dangerous and you can leave me on a _fucking_ beach as many times as you want but as long as it is even a little bit in my power I will find my way back to you because I am _never letting you leave me again_.”

She hadn’t wanted to cry, but the tears were welling over by this point. All she could think about then was the nightmare of her Doctor not existing. It would be like the gap between her visits to Bad Wolf Bay, only worse because now they’d given each other so much more of themselves than they ever had back then. Her Doctor was silent, staring at her with stricken eyes as her tear ducts betrayed her and the room shimmered under the weight of her water. How could he not understand that she couldn’t live without him? Exist, sure. But never live. And if keeping the person she loved most in the world meant burning herself from the inside out, then _so fucking be it_.

Unable to take being in the same room as him right then, she turned and stormed out, letting her tears come more freely as soon as she was out of the room. Footsteps sounded and then a hand caught her wrist. She tried to break free but he was stronger than her and suddenly she was against his chest and instead of hitting him she was fisting her hands around his shirt and trying not to howl. His heartbeat was the most glorious sound in the world.

“Rose.” He just kept saying her name, over and over and over.

  
And when she was done crying and done washing her face in the bathroom she found him waiting at the door for her. They looked at each other for a long moment, then he held out his hand and she took it. He didn’t say another word about her secret plan, but she knew it wasn’t because he’d let her win. He’d walk through as many hells to keep her safe as she would do for him.

Luckily, she knew for a fact that his TARDIS would do anything necessary to save him. Even if that meant sacrificing her wolf.

 


End file.
